being in the month of July the wearing of a shirt only with a cloak to
keep off the rain could not have been the cause of very great physical
discomfort apart from the cutting of his feet by stones on the road.
At the Cathedral they took Henry to the tomb of the man whose death he
had caused, and there he knelt and shed bitter tears, groaning and
lamenting. After again regretting his rash words in an address read by
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, and promising to restore the rights
and property of the Church, the King, kneeling at the tomb, wearing a
hair-shirt with a woollen one above it, placed his head and shoulders
in one of the openings in the tomb and there received five strokes
with a monastic rod from each of the bishops and abbots present, and
afterwards the eighty monks each administered three strokes. Henry was
now quite absolved, but he remained for the whole night with his bare
feet still muddy and in the same penitential garb.

[Illustration: THE SCENE OF THE MARTYRDOM IN THE NORTH-WEST TRANSEPT
OF THE CATHEDRAL.
Since the tragic death of Becket in 1170 practically everything in this
portion of the Cathedral has been re-constructed.]

Arriving in London, the King took to his bed, suffering from a
dangerous fever, but a few days later, hearing from Richmond in
Yorkshire that the Scots had been defeated and driven north, he
recovered rapidly, believing implicitly, after the manner of his age,
that this success was attributable to the penance he had undergone on
the day before the battle.

And so, through the savage murder of an archbishop and the severe
penance of a king the archiepiscopal capital of England began to
resound all over Europe, and the annual procession of pilgrims
commenced to traverse the hills along the old road from Winchester to
the little Norman city. Not by that way only did the vast crowds reach
Canterbury, for there was scarcely a road that at some period of the
year did not send its contribution to the throng which jostled through
the gates into the narrow streets leading to the monastery gateway.
Year after year wealth poured into the Cathedral coffers, and pilgrims
went away lighter in spirits and in purse, but each carrying with them
the little leaden bottle in which the infinitely diluted blood of the
martyr mixed with water was distributed.

Scarcely two months after Henry's penance the splendid choir of the
Cathedral caught fire, and the townsfolk, in a st